We examine the effect of joining the European Union on individual life satisfaction in Bulgaria and Romania in the context of the 2007 EU enlargement. Although EU membership is among the most important events in Bulgaria and Romania's modern histories, there is no evidence on how it affected the...

In the book, some 25 authors report on the implementation of the ECHR in their respective countries, including questions of ratification and implementation in law, awareness by legal professionals, inclusion in the curricula of law schools, practice of the courts, cases brought to Strasbourg,...

At the end of June 1999 the intra-EU duty free shopping was abolished among the fifteen member nations. The opponents of this resolution argued that such a tax-free sales sector created jobs EU-wide and hardly reduced the value added and excise tax revenue of individual countries. In their...

In view of the requirements of Stage 2 of European Monetary Union (EMU) for accession to the European Union, this paper examines the desirability for, and the ability of, the lead candidates in Central and Eastern Europe to participate in the new exchange rate mechanism (ERM2) and eventually in...

The transition to market-based economic systems in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union involves fundamental shifts in the allocation of resources and deep changes in the structure of production and employment. This paper uses a simple model of economic...

To mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this paper aims to assess developments in Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) over the past three decades, and to look forward to what the next 30 years might bring. First, we measure the convergence of per capita income, wages...

Transition and reorientation towards Western Europe have been the two decisive challenges for the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) since 1989. Whereas in the early 1990s the transition from the central planning system to a market economy was the main goal of economic policies, the...

This paper examines the transition process within Eastern Europe and the integration process with the EU and shows that the requirements for the transition towards a market economy overlap with the requirements for EU accession. Furthermore, the economic situation of the candidate countries is...

This paper extends the work of Kaminsky and Schmukler (2003) to the Baltic and Central Eastern European new Member States of the European Union, to test if the same short-run increase in cyclical volatility arising from financial integration is observed in this specific sample of "emerging...